Do you want to live forever? Yes. Do you want to live forever right now in a fallen world of sin? No. Of course not.
You want to go to heaven. But you have to wait. And the waiting can be frustrating, worrisome, and even scary.
Fear not, beloved of the Lord. You shall go to heaven. And you shall be protected while you go there.
And God, the Lord who made His covenant and promise to you, will gather you to Himself, is gathering you to Himself, and will keep you unto Himself into heaven. We have New Testament promises of this fact, and we have this Old Testament promise of this fact as well, to be encouragement. It’s not just one or two verses, it’s in several places in the Bible.
And here is one of them in Micah. That God is our King who has gathered us, who has protected us, who is leading us, leading us into heaven as His sheep. We are gathered of the Lord, verse 12.
Gathered of the LORD
Assembled together. This is interesting. Maybe it’s just me that finds it interesting.
Perhaps Dr. Kuppus. I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob. That word, assemble, there are four different Hebrew words for assemble.
Strange as that is. For gather, or to be brought together. One of those words, one of them, as I recall, many, many years ago, even to this day in seminary, I learned it from Dr. Kuppus first, of course, was to gather together for worship as the covenant-keeping people of God.
There’s a specific word for that in Hebrew. This is not that word. Sorry.
This is not that word. This is closer to an agricultural language. It’s used often to gather harvest in the Old Testament, so you see that in the language of Leviticus and elsewhere, and Chronicles and the like, where they were gathering things together for the Lord or for each other, or gathering people together.
Clearly, it’s here metaphorical use for gathering of God’s people and a sense of blessing them before God’s presence. As we know in verse 13, he is at the head of them, and he is their king. Gathering is usually done here.
In verse 2, you have, I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob. That is Israel. I will surely gather the remnants of Israel.
Two parallel ideas there, assemble and gather. Again, another word there for gather. This word usually emphasizes people who are gathered together.
We see that in Deuteronomy 33-4, where God talks about gathering his people, that he will gather them together, and, of course, ultimately, we know, circumcise their heart. And in Psalm 106, the same word is used as well. Save us, O Lord our God, and gather us from among the Gentiles to give thanks to your holy name, to triumph in your praise.
Isaiah 11-12, he will set up a banner for the nations and will assemble the outcasts of Israel and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. So you have this same echo here of Micah and Isaiah, and do not forget Isaiah and Micah are contemporary prophets, one for the northern tribe and one for the southern tribe, more or less, with overlapping themes. Gathering is one of them.
Micah 4-6, we see it’s exercised and explains a little further than this passage. In that day, says the Lord, the covenant-keeping God, I will assemble the lame, I will gather the outcasts, and those whom I have afflicted. So there is a theme of gathering, regardless of the word used, in the Old Testament, brought to prophecy in Isaiah 11, and here in Micah 2, and then again in Micah 4, and elsewhere.
A special kind of gathering, not a gathering of fruit and inanimate objects, but a gathering of God’s people, the outcasts, the remnant, as it says here. First he talks about, I will assemble Israel, not just Israel, all of you, but I will gather, in particular, part 2 of verse 12, the remnants of Israel. Another Old Testament theme, a stronger theme than gathering.
The remnants, that word there, for the one child here, is the idea of a small group, or a leftover group from a larger whole. It could be a large group, but if it’s part of a larger, yet larger group, so it’s a relative term. The remnant does not mean the super holy and always obedient people of God.
So the sermon is not going to be all, woe is us here this evening, and everyone else is cast out, and out of darkness, and the like. We are the remnants. That’s a cult mentality.
We’re not a cult. No, the remnant is the chosen of God, who are humbled by His grace. Who are humbled by His grace.
They don’t deserve to be the remnant. They deserve to be like the rest of the house of Israel, as we saw here in Micah, to be destroyed, to be judged, to be brought into captivity, and never to return again. But some do return, and some did return from Babylon, as you recall.
It was a remnant, a smaller group from the larger whole of God’s people. Only a few survived captivity, because only a few were humbled enough to repent. They too were brought into captivity, but their sins were forgiven.
So just because the same thing happens to the entire church doesn’t mean everyone in the entire church is unrepentant. We mentioned that in the prior sermons, how a sin of the majority can affect the minority, essentially, and there’s no way around it. The same happens in the church, as we see in the Old Testament, and in church history, and today in America, frankly.
The Old Testament was never about the visible church as such, and only. It’s part of it, because we have a visible church today. We have the preaching of the Word, we have the giving of the sacraments, we have the assembly of God’s people, even throughout the week.
But the invisible hearts that are submitted to God, you can be in the visible church and not be in the invisible body of Christ, as we know. And that’s part of the theme going on here in the Old Testament. It’s taught in the Old Testament.
So it’s not a new doctrine, but the old doctrine made clear. In Isaiah 10.23, we read, “…for though your people, O Israel, be as the sand of the sea, a remnant of them will return. The destruction decreed shall overflow with righteousness.” Isaiah 2 talks about not only the gathering, but the remnant.
Although you can be a large and glorious nation, that’s the idea being as many as the sand of the sea. Not just raw numbers, but you seem to be so blessed. That was the idea in the ancient Near East.
If the gods were on your side, if you’re doing the right thing, you’re going to be blessed. And part of that evidence of the gods liking you, and you’re doing the right thing, is that you’re prosperous, and there’s lots of you. Unlike Western civilization, where we think it’s wonderful to be less of us, and to have even less kids.
Back then, even among the unbelievers who got a better grip than our unbelievers do today, on many issues, ironically, having many kids is a blessing. It is a blessing. And he’s saying, even though you think you’re blessed, and it seems like you’re blessed, and there’s evidence that you’re blessed, you’re really not.
It’s the remnant that I save. Those whose hearts have been melted by God’s grace, and live a repentant life. Remember, the Old Testament prophecies often have a double object.
This is what I mean by that. You have the current events of Old Testament Israel, such as the Egyptian captivity, right? That was prophesied of all to Abraham. It happened, and it’s used as a pattern, the Passover and all that.
But it’s used as a pattern, and part of the prophecy of Abraham, and other ones as well, of that which comes in the future, the spiritual deliverance through Christ Jesus. Babylonian captivity and other things like that we have in the prophecies as well. It covers, therefore, the future New Testament age.
Not just then, not just the things happening there, physical activities and wars, and physical and political deliverances. These become symbols and echoes of future prophecies of Christ coming, and now coming in the flesh, and exercising that which he promised of old, to save his people to the uttermost. So the physical events become symbols of spiritual realities, and that’s how the prophets talk that way.
And it becomes confusing at times, like, what’s going on here? What’s the prophet saying? The prophet moves fluidly between the events of here and now, and when Christ comes, and even beyond Christ when he comes a second time. Then it can get really kind of confusing. There’s three things going on.
Then, right, during their time, the coming of Christ the first time, and the third time when Christ comes with new heaven and new earth, as we read of in Isaiah. At the end of the last few chapters. Like seeing, as I described once, several mountaintops all lined up in a row, and it only looks like one mountaintop, but there’s three of them.
Back up a little. Oh, there’s this one right now, there’s the next one, Christ coming the first time, and the third one way back there when he comes the final time. That’s how a number of the prophecies are, and that’s good for you to keep that in mind as we go through, Micah, and other prophets, Lord willing, I’m able to do that.
Romans 9.27. We’re still on the idea of the remnant, the gathered people of God. Romans 9.27 and following. Paul, here, as you probably recall in Romans 9, the great passage about the divine election of God Almighty.
God chooses whom he wills, and who are you, O man, to tell the God, you can’t do this, that’s not fair. I am God Almighty, and it’s quite fair. Paul argues, Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel.
Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, well, that sounds familiar, that’s right, I read that in Isaiah 10, the remnant will be saved, for he will finish the work and cut a short in righteousness, because the Lord will make the short work upon the earth. And as Isaiah said before, unless the Lord of Sabaoth hath left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been made like Gomorrah. Paul is taking the Old Testament theme, not just Isaiah, but Micah, and everywhere else this theme is followed through in the Old Testament, and applying it to the New Testament church.
It’s not just the Old Testament church, but the New Testament church, including the Gentiles, we are the remnant as well. And he concludes in that section in Romans 11, in those chapters 10 and 11, 11 to 5, even so then, at this present time, there is a remnant according to the election of grace. Paul is arguing that when Isaiah is talking to his Jewish audience, he wasn’t just talking to them, he was, but he’s doing more.
The Spirit is using his words to describe a reality, a spiritual reality of their time, that the remnant isn’t just a physical remnant, but a spiritual remnant. Not just those who are coming back from the Babylonian captivity after 70 years, which was not all the Jews, but those who trusted in Christ and rest upon him, the Messiah to come, and we in the New Testament, the Messiah who has already come, and rest and trust upon him. We are the remnant, Paul is saying.
The remnant was about the elect, showing, in Paul’s argument, that the outward form of Israel is fading away, and the true form has come forth in the New Testament era. That is the theme here. Not expounded in great detail, Micah mentions it here.
Remember, the way we divided Micah, typically, into three sections, at the end of each section, after all the woes and judgment, he talks a little bit about the glories of grace and mercy, at the end of each section. We’re about to start the new section, chapter 3, verse 1, where he says, Here now, each of the three sections starts out with here, here now, here now, here now, that’s the pattern. We’re ending this first iteration or cycle of the prophet with good news, not just bad, not just the Assyrian king is coming down to wipe you out, but there will be a remnant, they will survive, and the king of kings will lead them into glory.
You are that remnant, brothers and sisters, like those of all the elect and chosen of Israel that were the remnant during Micah’s time and later, we too follow in their footsteps. As a remnant today, in the midst of the world, you are outnumbered. I don’t know, 100 to 1, 1,000 to 1, it doesn’t matter.
You, that is all the followers of Jesus in the world, not just you here this evening, but our brothers and sisters across America, across Europe, across South America, across Africa, across Asia, across Australia, they’re outnumbered. The church upon this world, the remnant, is outnumbered. And any and all believers, humbled by their sin, we’re all outnumbered.
Any and all who are sincerely seeking to obey Christ by His power, we’re all outnumbered. We’re a remnant in this world. But more closely to the thought of Micah, and as Paul picks up, it’s not the world as such that the theme of remnant really comes out, because the remnant is a remnant of the house of God, of the church.
We’re a remnant within the church, the apostate church. Israel becomes an apostate church, they stay an apostate church, and God seals that apostasy upon them in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. No more sacrifices.
You call yourself Jews? How can you be a Jew without sacrifices? Oops. We, again, all those who are humbled by their sin, all those sincerely seeking by the power of Christ to follow Him and love Him and keep His commandments, we are a minority in the institutional churches that were established by God of old, that have apostatized, the mainline churches, and so the OPC was spat out of their mouth. They didn’t want us anymore.
Not just the OPC, the PCA, not just the PCA, the conservative Baptists and the conservative Methodists, and they had the purge over 120 years ago or so, 100 years ago. We were spat out. We became the remnant within the church, a smaller group of those who claim to be following God but really aren’t following God.
The remnants are the ones who are really following God Almighty. And so we are outnumbered among the church-going people in the West. In America, it stands out a little more.
In Europe, not as many people go to church, I understand. When we were in Germany, my wife and I, it was very hard to find a church. We found one church, and we talked to the natives, and said they just, there’s no concern.
They’re just all liberal, all unbelief, as eaten through the churches of Europe. So in our neighborhoods, at our jobs, at our schools, and even our churches at times, there is a remnant that is outnumbered, and we feel squeezed. We feel surrounded and outnumbered, but we should not despair, brothers and sisters.
Numbers don’t matter. Your weak faith does not matter. Power of the Lord God Almighty, that is what matters, because what you see here is I will surely assemble you.
I will surely gather you. I will put them together. I will make you a flock.
I will walk out before you and lead you. It is I, I, I. It is God Almighty who is doing all this for us and to you. That should be the comfort.
Not our weak faith, not how many converts we have, but Him alone. So He is gathering us, drawing us by His Holy Spirit, brothers and sisters, as He did of the remnant of old here in Micah. And we’re protected by the Lord.
Protected by the LORD
The verb isn’t there, protected, but the imagery is there. I will put them together like sheep of the fold, like a flock in the midst of their pasture. You gather them together because the shepherd is there to protect them and guide them and to lead them.
We are protected like the sheep that we are, like a sheepfold is one translation. This prophecy, in fact, was likely fulfilled in the Old Testament times. In 2 Kings 18 and 17, maybe your study Bible has that, in 2 Kings 18 and 17 and following, from chapter 19 to 21, I think, describes the coming of the Assyrian king and how he ravages the land, comes up to Jerusalem, and they are all shepherded and boxed up into the four walls, the many walls of Jerusalem, and they can’t get out.
The Assyrian king does not conquer Jerusalem, however. And in fact, later on, he gets decimated. Micah’s talking to that audience, and it seems as though there’s been a fulfillment of this prophecy that he gathers his people together like the sheep of a fold into the midst of their pasture and the protection of Jerusalem, that they were shut up and guarded in God’s providence.
The Assyrian king is a rampage across the land and conquered many and all armies around him and cities, walled cities, but he did not and could not conquer Jerusalem. And they don’t like to admit that in their histories. If you look up the archaeology, they talk about, for instance, locking up the king and shutting him up as a bird in a cage, whereas all the other battles he has, he talks about decimating and wiping out his enemies.
So he doesn’t want to admit he couldn’t wipe him out. He just had to lock him up, and that’s about as best as he got. He caged him in Jerusalem, right? That’s it.
So he really didn’t win in that sense, a full victory, and we know he gets decimated later on, the Assyrian king. In Isaiah 40, verse 11, we read, Like a shepherd, he will tend his flock. In his arm, he will gather the lambs and carry them in his bosom.
He will gently lead the nursing ewes. Same imagery again in Isaiah as Micah. Different audience.
He talks more to the rich, the powerful. Isaiah does. Micah talks more to the poor, middle class.
But same imagery of the shepherd, that God is our shepherd. In fact, as we know, Jesus is our shepherd. In Micah 5.3, we read, Therefore he shall give them up until the time that she who is in labor shall give birth, and the remnant of his brethren shall return to the children of Israel.
The giving birth, and the remnant of his brethren shall return to the children of Israel is a picture of Christ and God’s people being vindicated by his work for us now. We are his sheep. He is our shepherd.
We are protected by Christ Jesus himself. He’s not your pastor, not your parents or your best friends as much as they are helpful in your life as a Christian. It is Christ himself, the Lord of heaven and earth, that is your shepherd, brothers and sisters.
And he is gathering, and will continue to gather you together into the pastures of green beside the still waters. He’ll restore your souls, and his rod shall comfort you. He protects you from the world, the flesh, and the devil.
He shepherds you within with the Spirit indwelling you, giving you the fruit of the Spirit and new desires to love him and follow him. He shepherds you from without by giving you the word to read and prayer and worship and fellowship. Those work together hand in hand in God’s providence, the internal life and the external life of the Christian, of the sheep, of you and I. As a shepherd in the Old Testament, the imagery of the king is given as a shepherd.
That’s why it fits here as well. Like a flock in the midst of the pasture, I will bring them together. And then he talks there in verse 13, I will be their king and pass before them and Lord as their head.
The king is called a shepherd often in the Old Testament language, in the ancient Near East in particular. That is to emphasize that the king is like your father who cares for you and cares for his people. And perhaps, perhaps more than likely, for the pagans, it’s a good PR program, right? We’re the government.
We’re here to help you. I am the king. I’m here to help you.
I think in the best of them, and there are some relatively good kings, like it seems like Cyrus was, especially to Cod’s people, of course. They were trying to be good, and they were trying to be a father to the people, the pagans. There’s also a wise and powerful person who protects and guides the sheep.
That’s what the shepherd does as well in the imagery. Not just one who loves by words, but loves by actions. And so Christ, our Savior, who is our shepherd, and we are his sheep, loves us, guides us, protects us, watches over us.
He’s our elder brother. That’s exactly the love of the Lord, our God, for us here, to the people of Old Testament and to we who are today. They are the church.
We are the church, as we saw in Sunday School class this morning. So we can go to this pastor and say, yeah, it’s to the Jews, but we know the Jews, the true Jews, was the church. It’s the church in the Old Testament.
They did things a little different, but most of it was the same in terms of heart and the spirituality and the aim and the Ten Commandments. It is for us, and we can have comfort in these verses. Brothers and sisters in Christ, he is gathering you now into his church, and Christ is using the church as the ark prepared for a heaven to protect us because the word is here and the gospel is here.
And so he leads us to heaven, verse 13. While he gathers us, while he protects us, he is leading us. The one who breaks open will come up before them.
Led by the LORD…to Heaven
They will break out to pass through the gates and go out by it. Their king will pass before them with the Lord at their head. To break forth in victory is how I understand this.
They will break out and pass through the gates and go by it. Nothing shall stop them. They will go forth to the promised land.
We shall go forth to the promised land. Physically, of course, Israel had many victories, and they survived by God’s power. They’re nothing compared to the spiritual victories we have in Christ Jesus.
Victory over death, victory over sin, victory over temptation. When you’re delivered by Christ, he broke you out of the prison house of sin whose master Satan had bound you. But a stronger man comes along, Jesus Christ, and binds the strong man.
And thus you are delivered. This is salvation. This is what we see here in this prophecy.
We are led by our king. Their king will pass before them. That is the remnant.
With the Lord, the covenant-keeping God, it’s all caps there, at their head. Leading them to the promised land. Leading them to the new heavens and new earth as we see at the end of Isaiah.
Their king will pass before them. He gathers, he protects, he leads. All this is done by the Lord.
God is doing this. He’s the active agent here working on us because we are so weak like sheep who need help, who need guidance, who need protection. The promise-making, the covenant-keeping king of the universe is leading you to heaven right now.
You see that? Here, in the midst of judgment, and we feel judgment sometimes in our life, and it’s true judgment because our father who loves us will judge you. That is discipline you like a father disciplines his children as it says in Hebrews. Unless you’re an illegitimate child.
Still gives us promise at the other end. It’s better to be spanked by a loving parent than by an angry judge, isn’t it? Because you know the end is better for you. The end of rectifying us, changing us to have victory over sin on the cross.
To have victory over sins in our lives right now. A little bit here, a little bit there. To guide you to heaven one day at a time, brothers and sisters.
This is what your lord and master does, your great shepherd of the sheep. He gathers you. He protects you.
And he leads you by his word and spirit. Do you believe this? Is this not encouraging in this day and age of darkness upon this land? Within your generation, you can see it. It’s like night and day, isn’t it? Absolutely astounding how quick this nation has fallen.
But God has not fallen, and God will not let you fall. Next time, you get down to the mouth, read these verses, and meditate upon how Christ is gathering, protecting, and leading you, the Lord at your head, leading you towards heaven. Let’s pray.
With these words of truth and encouragement, God, after many verses of discouragement and judgment upon the house of Israel, that is the church of God even today, may we who are your people be humbled by that fact and be encouraged and strengthened to carry on on our Christian walk, Lord, to rest in Christ, who is our shepherd, who gathers us, who protects us, and who leads us. Amen.